Last Friday, the Fourth Circuit dismissed as non-justiciable the appeal of a judgment in a challenge to potential improvements to specific sections of I-81. Judge Wilkinson wrote the opinion for the Court in Shenandoah Valley Network v. Capka, which was joined in by Judge King and Judge Keenan. The I-81 improvement project will take place in two tiers. This litigation arose at the end of Tier 1, before Tier 2 had run its course. The nub of the dispute was the extent to which decisions made at Tier 1 would foreclose consideration of alternatives at Tier 2. The court concluded that the appellants were mistaken about the extent of foreclosure at Tier 2. The court was satisfied that, once the parties’ positions were clear, there was no actual dispute giving rise to a case or controversy. Accordingly, dismissal was warranted: “Because such [an actual] dispute is lacking here–and because we cannot issue an advisory opinion–we have no authority to adjudicate this suit.” The court also cashed out its justiciability conclusion in standing terms: There was no injury or threat of imminent injury.

One interesting feature of the decision comes in a footnote at the end, in which the court notes that it would not order vacatur of the district court’s judgment: “The gist of the district court’s ruling is that the review process should be allowed to move beyond Tier 1 to Tier 2. Because vacatur is an equitable remedy, U.S. Bancorp Mortg. Co. v. Bonner Mall P’Ship, 513 U.S. 18, 29 (1994), and because the balance of factors reveals no good reason to vacate the district court’s ruling, we decline to do so.” This reasoning, and the court’s careful phrasing of the justiciability problem (i.e., “there remains nothing to dispute” and “no justiciable controversy lingers”) suggests that the justiciability problem was not a pure standing issue, but some combination of mootness (of claims about Tier 1) and ripeness (of claims about Tier 2) .